iPhone 5c Sales Begin Closing Gap On iPhone 5s Lead

Market analysis firm Localytics’ Bernd Leger says that after extensively reporting early iPhone 5s and 5c adoption data both in the U.S. and globally after the initial 48 and 72 hours of sales, they are now analyzing preferences for the two phones across 12 major U.S. cities and by carrier.

They’ve found that New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco held the largest market share in the U.S. for iPhone 5s and 5c activations, but the real surprise was that San Francisco came in third. Looking at distribution of the iPhone 5s and 5c for each of the cities respectively. San Francisco again stood out, showing the strongest preference for the 5s over the 5c (85% vs. 15%) among the top 12 major U.S. cities, while Philadelphia showed the lowest preference for the more expensive model with 72%.

Leger also notes that on September 22, active iPhone 5s and 5c’s represented 1.4% of all active iPhones in the U.S. across the top 4 carriers: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile, but by September 26, that metric had risen to 2.0%.

The gap between 5s and 5c sales volumes is also closing somewhat. Leger reports that on September 22, the iPhone 5s was outpacing the 5c by a factor of 3.4x, but as of September 26, the 5c was gaining ground, with that ratio decreasing to 2.9x, with the iPhone 5s representing 1.5% and the 5c 0.5% of all iPhones activated in the U.S.